Delhi Belly

(2011)
Im not big on Bollywood; Ive nothing against it, Ive just usually nothing for it. Im not sure how I heard about this film likely as a trailer on some HK film but it looked good enough to take a chance on. Delhi Belly follows the story of three roommates Tashi (Imran Khan), Arup (Vir Das), and Nitin (Kunaal Roy Kapur) who inadvertently become involved in/cause a smuggling trade to go wrong. The three young men are slovenly bachelors, which provides some of the comedy in the set up, but Tashi is dating a very attractive stewardess, Sonia (Shenaz Treasury) who agrees to move a package for a friend who has taken ill. When she doesnt have time to deliver it, she asks Tashi, who foists it off on Nitin, who, on the way, buys some food from a street vendor and ends up with a terrible case of indigestion and diarrhea (hence the title). Nitin, incapacitated, asks Arup to deliver the package, and also take a stool sample to the doctor, and naturally Arup confuses the two. So the gangsters want their product and instead are given a thermos full of poo; you can see why they would be mad. Crime comedies like this are sadly all too frequent, relying on their leads to be dimwitted and stupid and somehow come out all right, usually through the machination of very lazy plotting. But DB spins most of the cilches on their head, making them fresh and funny again. The three guys are so lazy they wont even get out of bed to use their two hours of allotted water a day that it works like a running gag; while they are out of their league, they arent stupid, and they are abetted by one of Tashis fellow journalists, Menaka (Poorna Jagannathan), whose plotline seems like an unnecessary diversion to give Tashi something to do until later in the film, when it pays off. There are several clever scenes both in the sequence where things go wrong in the package, and afterward as the guys try to make right; I laughed pretty much throughout the whole thing (even the requisite musical number, involving a fictitious character known as Disco Fighter, is hilarious). Much of the credit goes to the leads, who all underplay their characters nicely (as befits a group of lazy slackers). Even the gorgeous Sonia cant really get Tashis pulse to race; the guys are fundamentally committed to their lazy lifestyle, and only the threat of death can snap them out their semi-comas. All three lads are excellent; Khan is imminently likeable, but both Das and Kapur are fun as well. The ladies are also sharp Treasurys Sonia is a bit dim, but Menaka is smart, sharp, and clever, and all of them appeal to the viewer (even the villains, who have to do little more than scowl and grunt, have fun with their roles and are enjoyable. Keep an eye on the henchmen in every scene, theyre always doing something goofy in the background). The film waxes a little zany, and theres a lot of running around toward the end (as there always is in crime comedies), but Delhi Belly is smart and funny enough to overcome the clichs of its genre and get it right. Any number of American

comedies could learn a lesson or two from this well-executed film. This is one of the better comedies Ive seen in the last few years, and is well worth checking out. September 5, 2012